![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2021\/03\/crocus-4025997_640.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There is nothing colder than a forty degree day, when it was in the sixties earlier in the week. Something about that contrast is a sharper, more painful cold than the cold of a day with a much lower temperature earlier in the year. In February, I was excited for the weather to get above freezing. Now, at the end of the first week of March, it feels cruel.<\/p>\n
Every patch of snow has finally melted away. The earth is noisy and wet\u2013 not the crunch<\/em> of fresh powdery snow nor the crack<\/em> of snow that\u2019s fallen and half-melted and then frozen over, but the slap<\/em> of dirty shoes on saturated earth. The grass is still brown. The air still smells like frost. The dandelions aren\u2019t out yet and the bulbs haven\u2019t come up. But we\u2019re turning a corner into the Spring. The temperature inches up and then it crashes, leaving us shuddering cold.<\/p>\n I put on my thick coat and went for a walk.<\/p>\n I should have walked yesterday. Walking is another strategy for protecting my health, along with diet and medication<\/a>. But yesterday I was terribly sick.<\/p>\n My period had been a little late\u2013 a symptom of POCS, I know. I was having particularly bad PMS and starting to get a little nauseous\u2013 something else that can happen when your hormones don\u2019t work as they ought. I didn\u2019t have a pregnancy test in the house because I\u2019d thrown them all away in frustration the last time I was a little late. The dipping, waiting, praying, mourning when I saw\u00a0 it negative and then doing it again the next time I had to use the bathroom was just too painful. I didn\u2019t want to look at them. I hadn\u2019t kept them in the house since the false alarm I\u2019m pretty sure was a \u201cchemical pregnancy\u201d back in September. So I said I\u2019d buy a test the next time I went to the store. I told myself again and again that it was probably nothing. But at the same time I was telling myself, I was window shopping at online clothing stores for pretty maternity outfits. I was googling feast days and saint\u2019s names nine months from now. I was plotting out a blog post announcing good news, with the line \u201cthe Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His Name\u201d in it. I\u2019m far from the first woman who has struggled with fertility who\u2019s blogged that line. But I want to be one of the women who gets to say it.<\/p>\n Yesterday I got my period, heavy because it was late, particularly painful and with flu-like symptoms a bad period can cause when you\u2019ve got PCOS and fibromyalgia. I was sick in bed for a day and didn\u2019t get my walk, but I\u2019m better now.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not supposed to talk about periods.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not supposed to talk about the grief that comes from mourning possible children who never existed, not even for a few seconds, no matter how hard you wished. Nor children who did exist for a few hours or a day, but bounced off the endometrium and splashed into the toilet unnoticed. Nor the anguish of not knowing which it was\u2013 a soul to call you \u201cMother\u201d on the other side, or not.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not supposed to talk about the grief of wanting a great big Catholic family, all laughter and chaos, one beautiful baby after another, and only getting one child. Not when so many women want a great big Catholic family and got no children at all. It\u2019s spoiled.<\/p>\n I watch Rosie grow up such a fierce and wonderful, beautiful person. I am proud of every new stage of development she\u2019s entered, but every time I\u2019ve mourned who she used to be as well. I woke up from nightmares about losing a baby and found the baby gone and a preschooler with me. I woke up from nightmares about a preschooler running away and found the preschooler gone forever, replaced by a vivacious older child who won\u2019t sit still to read. And now she\u2019s almost ten. But she gets annoyed with me when I talk about missing her when she was tiny.<\/p>\n These are sufferings that shouldn\u2019t be voiced.<\/p>\n I walked through the shabbier streets where the poorest people lived. It was sunny, impossibly bright without a cloud in the sky\u2013 rare, for Steubenville. There is no weather that feels as cold as forty degrees in March, and there\u2019s no weather that feels as sunny as a sunny day in LaBelle when there aren\u2019t any leaves on the trees yet. The sun made eerie shadows out of everything, as if everything was a cardboard cutout and not real at all. It felt like the curtain would open in a moment, and I would take a bow and not be Mary Pezzulo anymore but an interesting person. And then a stage hand would clear away these set pieces and all the mud and dirt and brokenness of LaBelle would be gone forever. I\u2019ve wished for that to happen. I\u2019ve wished for the annihilation of LaBelle and Steubenville and Mary Pezzulo more often than I can ever express. I want to be somebody else.<\/p>\n I rounded the bend to the street called LaBelle View, where the beautiful mansions sit on the cliffs overlooking the downtown slums. This is the only part of the LaBelle neighborhood where people have money. Franciscan University professors live there, mostly. They put big statues of the Virgin Mary in their yards, and they\u2019re always trying new tactics to force the poor out of LaBelle so the value of their properties will go up. I\u2019ve heard professors\u2019 wives with a whole gaggle of children declare that God rewarded them with a mansion, because they had faith in Him and didn\u2019t use birth control.<\/p>\n The real reason they can afford a mansion has nothing to do with birth control. It\u2019s because nobody wants to live in Northern Appalachia, so the cost of buying a house is miniscule. They don\u2019t use birth control and they buy a mansion on a tenured professor\u2019s salary. I don\u2019t use birth control and I rent a three-bedroom house for six hundred dollars a month, with a little help from friends. I don\u2019t know whether my landlord uses birth control or not, but I know that he bought my house for fifteen thousand dollars when it was a derelict crack house. The poor in the downtown slums nail blankets over their windows in winter and sleep in their coats because they can\u2019t afford to turn the heat on, whether they use birth control or not. The woman who starved her son to death<\/a> this summer surely wasn\u2019t on birth control: that was her ninth child, the first eight had been taken away for neglect, and the tenth was taken from her when she was arrested. She lived in the nastiest cheap apartment you ever saw, and now the town gossips say the landlord can\u2019t rent out that room anymore because it\u2019s too notorious.<\/p>\n Neither a mansion nor a pregnancy is a reward for good behavior. I wish they were, but they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n I have spoken many times with God about just this topic, but He hasn\u2019t replied to me. Not in words, at least.<\/p>\n Today, He replied in crocuses.<\/p>\n I turned the corner to a poorer street and found a front yard full of crocuses. No other yards had their crocuses out yet, but this one had them in abundance. They\u2019d popped\u00a0 up suddenly since the last time I\u2019d walked, all through the brown grass, bloom after soft purple bloom, the very first flowers I\u2019d seen since last Autumn. They hadn\u2019t returned to the wealthier side of LaBelle but here on the shabby side where we can\u2019t pretend God rewards our obedience. Life returns. Times and seasons change. New mysteries replace old mysteries. What the future holds I do not know, but it won\u2019t be winter forever; someday, it will be something else.\u00a0 Living things burst out of dead earth into a world that doesn\u2019t deserve them, for the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His Name.<\/p>\n The winter is almost over, and life is coming back.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image via Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross\u00a0<\/a><\/em>and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n